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Overview

‘COMP 230 - Storyboard Design and Development’ introduces you to professional storytelling and storyboarding techniques, particularly for live action and animation sequences. It guides you through steps involved in storytelling, leading you to techniques of drawing and other media for motion and emotion. It then discusses specific aspects of directing a storyboard such as visual clarity, depth, semiotics, semantics, and dramatic irony.

The overall goal of this course is to guide you through the text book, engage you to study individual storyboarding elements, enable you to practice these elements in the right context. There are assignments and a project to test your progress and storyboarding competence. There is no final exam since your learning experience cannot be measured in a 3-hour written exam.

Storyboards typically result in pictures. You could use a paper and draw on it, or you could use a software such as SketchUp. You are also welcome to use any other software of your choice. We also encourage you to use freeware such as Celtx to prepare your scripts.

Course Objectives

The objective of this course is to provide undergraduate students with the comprehensive, hands-on, and in-depth knowledge of Storyboarding and Storytelling concepts, methods, practices, and strategies using a learning-by-doing approach to learning.

Learning Outcomes

After completing COMP 230, students should have deep understanding of storyboarding and storytelling concepts, methods, practices, and strategies and have the ability to create storyboards using powerful storytelling ideas. The outcomes are:

disseminate the events of the story

define the threshold of awareness in the story

create the structural level of the story for clarity and dramatic presentation

guide audience’s attention to narrative questions and metaphors that drive the story forward

direct the viewer’s eyes and ears with composition and perspective

signify meanings and associations through semiotics

construct meaning with respect to continuity and causality

evoke emotional response and measure it using thematic analysis

evolve and sustain the story using storytelling ideas, enacted through software

Outline

Week 1: Chapter 1. The Goal: Why Do We Watch?

Week 2: Chapter 2. Common Beginner Problems

Week 3: Chapter 3. The Beginning Basics

Week 4: Chapter 4. How to Draw for Storyboarding: motion and emotion

Week 5: Chapter 5. Structural Approach: tactics to reach the goal

Week 6: Chapter 6. What Do Directors Direct?

Week 7: Chapter 7. How to Direct the Eyes

Week 8: Chapter 8. Directing the Eyes Deeper in Space and Time

Week 9 Chapter 9. How to Make Images Speak: the hidden power of images

Week 10: Chapter 10. How to Convey and Suggest Meaning

Week 11: Chapter 11. Dramatic Irony

Week 12: Chapter 12. The Big Picture: Story Structures

Week 13: Chapter 13. Aiming for the Heart

Week 14: Chapters 14, 15, and 16

Week 15: Project Preparation

Week 16: Project Presentation

Evaluation

To receive credit for COMP 230, you must achieve a course composite grade of at least “D” (50 percent) and a grade of at least 50 percent on each assignment and 50 percent on the final project. The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:

Assignment Activities

Weight for grade

Maximum Marks

Minimum required to pass

Assignment 1

5%

5%

2.5%

Assignment 2

5%

5%

2.5%

Assignment 3

5%

5%

2.5%

Assignment 4

10%

10%

5%

Assignment 5

10%

10%

5%

Assignment 6

10%

10%

5%

Assignment 7

5%

5%

2.5%

Assignment 8

5%

5%

2.5%

Assignment 9

5%

5%

2.5%

Assignment 10

5%

5%

2.5%

Project

35%

35%

17.5%

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.

Course Materials

Directing the Story: Professional Storytelling and Storyboarding Techniques for Live Action and Animation, by Francis Glebas, Focal Press, 2009. Paperback or Kindle edition.

Other Materials

SketchUp – a free 3D modeling program for storyboarding

Celtx – a free scripting program for storyboarding

Special Course Features

CIS courses at Athabasca University require that students use computer mediated communications. We expect students to have access to computer equipment with certain requirements.

The course work in COMP 230 requires students to have a storyboarding software and a storyboarding scripting program installed in their computer.

Special Instructional Features

Delivery of COMP 230 (contacting the tutor, submitting assignments) is dependent on computer mediated communications. Students are required to have access to the World Wide Web.

Challenge for Credit Course Overview

The Challenge for Credit process allows students to demonstrate that they have acquired a command of the general subject matter, knowledge, intellectual and/or other skills that would normally be found in a university level course.